If you were to ever come to New Zealand around the summer months, you’ll see signs everywhere for “Real Fruit Ice Cream”. I beseech you not to drive by, but to pull over the MINUTE you see this sign.
There is your usual scoop ice cream here, tasty in the oversweetened way that all bucket scoop ice cream is, but the real fruit ice cream is a treat, especially if you can find it at a local berry farm that grows its own fruit on premises and then makes it into a delicious cone.
You get a choice of strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, boysenberry or mixed. Take your pick, they’re all tasty. A screwpull machine sits on the counter, and into this two scoops of vanilla ice cream are lobbed in, followed by a few scoops of your berry of choice. The handle is lowered and the motor is turned on, crushing the berries and the ice cream together into a swirl of fresh, tart, tastiness, and not one bit too sweet.
We’re eating up as much as we can while it’s still here, as it doesn’t stick around for —winter.
A close up of perfection
In other news, we went to Raglan a few weekends ago for a visit to the West coast of NZ. Another family who we’ve become friends with wanted to check out a reggae music festival there that touts itself as being family-friendly. Eric and I took a look at the music schedule, thought about muddy mosh pits, port-a-potties, and reggae music and decided to pass on the festival.
Pukeko Crossing!
Upon arrival to Raglan, Eric wanted to go the beach to look at the waves, and the kids only wanted to go to what they remembered as a magical playground from our short stop there last year. It was still fun, though sadly smaller than they remembered.
Eric’s dream was to surf the West Coast and catch a ride on a different sort of wave than the gentle surf we have in Ohope. We walked past the festival grounds, and saw swarms of twentysomething women all dressed in identical clothing – cutoff jean shorts, crop tops, Adidas sneakers, holding clear plastic cups with beer as they ambled past. The rare one had flip-flops on as the only sartorial variation I saw among festival goers. The twentysomething boys were dressed pretty generically similar as well – shorts, tees, same sneakers, same cup of beer. As we got to the beach, some of them were running around wildly and stripping off before diving into the water, knocking other people out of the way. We looked at our kids and told them they’d BETTER never act like that, though chances are they probably will.
I usually feel pretty young-at-heart, as if I could still be a twentysomething inside, but then there are moments when I’m around ACTUAL twentysomethings and I think to myself, nope, I’m every bit of forty and perfectly happy to be so. Our friends had a very short visit to the festival, drew the same conclusions, and spent the rest of the time at the beach.
The Air BnB we stayed at had kayaks available for our use, and we hauled them down to the bay to ride around. One of them had a missing back gasket, but we happened to have a roll of duck tape and MacGyvered it so we could still take out the kayak. It was the girl’s first time in a single kayak and she did great! We kayaked across the bay to the limestone rock formations. We had unknowingly set out at high tide, an excellent accident as we could paddle our way around and through the pancake rocks, feeling very much like intrepid explorers.
Rounding the corner around pancake rocks
We’ve signed up for a three day hut hiking trip over the Tongariro Northern Circuit. One of the highlights is Mt. Ngaurahoe (Nau-ra-ho-ee), otherwise known as Mt. Doom to Lord of the Rings fans! Our friend Chris has been trying in vain to convince our kids that orcs lie in wait for them on the trail and Nazgul might snatch them from overhead, but to no avail – they are too streetwise to fall for such tricks.
Each day has us hiking between 5-10 miles and sleeping in huts along the way. We are in no way capable of doing this on our own and have signed up with a company that feeds us, guides us, and carries the heavy stuff so we don’t have to.
Eek! Steep steps on a training hike!
We have been doing a lot of training hikes to get ourselves and the kids ready. We did a nice long one in Raglan that was about 3.5 hours and one of the most challenging hikes we’ve done. Most of it starts off going straight uphill, until you come to a rocky narrow ledge that has steep dropoffs on either side. bout halfway up, Eric got worried the kids wouldn’t make it down. I threw a small fit about wanting to complete the hike, given that no matter if we went further it’s not like the going down would be easier at that point. We were all happy that we didn’t for shortly after was a scramble up a muddy, rootbound hill which has chains helpfully bolted in for you to hold onto as you climb up or down, and now we all got to feel a bit like Lara Croft as she scampered through jungle scenes.
Eric tried his legs at surfing on the West Coast, and alas the waves were just a bit too rough and knocked him around a bit. I went out boogie boarding with the kids and this was fantastic, as the shore break is long and you get a fun ride in! Once, though, I got out just a few feet farther than I should have and the ocean let me know it by smashing me down – the West Coast ocean does not mess around.
The view on the way up
On the way back to Ohope, we stopped in at the Hamilton Botanic Gardens which are free to the public. They have these wonderful walled in garden spaces that are set up like gardens from times past and future. Some of them, like the “American pop modern” garden isn’t what I would consider a typical botanical garden, but a backyard outdoor space, with a large pop art painting of Marilyn Monroe, a small paddling pool and a turquoise blob of concrete meant to be art – and that was the point, to make you reconsider what it meant to have something be a garden. Some of the more traditional ones are below, and we had a lovely few hours wandering around before heading home to our little beachside house.
English Medieval Garden
Maori Kumara (yam) field – Red building is a gorgeous carved storehouse to dry yams
Italian Renaissance Garden
Chinese Contemplative Garden, a rare moment of peace.
-s
fretzes on the loose 